


Called Up From The Mouth of Oblivion

by StarkAstarte



Series: Stucky Drabbles [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Post-Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 13:37:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1607060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarkAstarte/pseuds/StarkAstarte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier watches the man from the bridge from the rooftops of DC. He might feel something. Maybe.</p><p>[Bits of Stucky narrative I'm posting as drabbles that might turn up later as part of a longer, more cohesive fic]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Called Up From The Mouth of Oblivion

The world has always been like this, with him in it or with him out of it. Every time he wakes, it’s not just that he can’t remember. It’s that it’s never as different as it should be.

            He doesn’t sleep. Sleep equals surrender. To sleep is to die and be remade. People give in to it so easily, like breathing. But even breathing is hard for him. There is a constant weight, an endless emptiness. He doesn’t know what’s left inside of him, what’s been replaced. What’s been left out altogether.

            He used to wonder, in his lucid moments staring up at the stars from the bottom of a dugout, from the bowels of a bomb crater, if the dead dream. Now he knows they do. Now he knows what they dream about.

            There are words in Russian that describe the world better than he can. It’s a language like a cut throat. It bleeds and it bleeds, a gout that never ends. It even tastes like blood, a slippery, congealing ribbon slipping from his throat, the words a visceral gargle. Sometimes it’s the only language he knows, and he has no one to speak it to. Not that he would. There is only one person he would talk to if he could. But the man from the bridge doesn’t belong to him: he is the Other Guy’s.

            And anyway—Captain America doesn’t know Russian.

            The Winter Soldier doesn’t know Captain America.

            Even Steven.

 

DC isn’t his city. He doesn’t have a city, but if he did, this wouldn’t be it. DC has no smell. He doesn’t trust anything that doesn’t smell. A stink is much better than nothing at all. He’s had too much of nothing.

            The thing is, he remembers the darkness. He remembers the void. Like being buried alive in the vastness of space with all trace of starlight snuffed out, a complete and total blackout. He remembers drifting, limbless. His body and his mind gone. An animal consciousness all that remained. There isn’t much more to him now, other than the brief and brilliant flashes that come over him like seizures. Memories of a filthy river, the water like tinned soup. The murky flavour on the back of his tongue as he spurts it out of his mouth in a far-reaching arch into the face of a scrawny blond boy. _Hey, quit it, Buck! I mean it! You know Ma’ll kill me if I get wet._ The soldier shakes his head to get the voice out. It trickles from his ears like water and evaporates. As soon as it’s gone, he wants it back.

            He misses the war. The war was good. It made sense. He had a job to do and did it better than anyone. He doesn’t know why he’s here. He shouldn’t be here. He scrounges around his mind, searching for a _should_ , but finds nothing. He’s got no orders. He’s gone AWOL. There is no must. There is no should. He is an army of one and has no war.

            He misses something else, too. It has no name. It has no voice. It can’t call him back from the edge. The edge is where he lives now, neither fish nor fowl. He’s a shadow that breathes, crouching into itself. A shadow with eyes that watch, waiting. For nothing. He waits for nothing, and that’s what he gets.

 

            He watches the men running around the tall thing that isn’t a building that has water all around it. It looks important, like it means something everyone understands but him. The men run, one faster than the other, easily outstripping his companion again and again. There is camaraderie there. He understands what that looks like. But there is distance, too—more distance than any amount of slowing down or speeding up will ever suture together. The faster man is alone. He looks like a statue, running. A statue that breathes. A statue out of time and place. The Winter Soldier knows what it’s like. The blond man’s shadow is smaller than he is, a trick of the light. It stretches as it shrinks, like a frailer man following behind him. It means something to the Other Guy. He watches through the Winter Soldier’s eyes the tiny phantom of something fragile dogging the large man’s steps. The thin arms and legs. The way the shadow seems to stumble and then get back up again. Like it could do this all day. But it can’t. Nothing made of light can last. The Winter Soldier watches the silhouette weaken until it is gone, leaving a legend in its place.

          Something in him is diminished. Even his enemy can see that. The man from the bridge is alone, more alone than anyone can see from merely looking at him. There is a word for that in Russian, but the phantom haunting the rooftop doesn't allow himself to say it. The Winter Soldier closes his eyes. He is close to feeling something. It makes him sick. It makes his eyes wet. He rubs at them with his metal fist until they are red and raw and seeing stars. They spangle the sky like tiny incendiaries. The war has returned for him at last. He is its only soldier. He will not win.

 


End file.
